Monday, 10 August 2015

On Friday 11 September MPs will vote on the
Assisted Dying (No 2) Bill tabled by Labour’s Rob Marris. In case you were
wondering, it’s called ‘No 2’ because an almost identical Assisted
Dying Bill has been tabled in the House of Lords by Labour Peer Lord
Falconer.

Marris wants to change the law to allow mentally competent
adults with less than six months to live to obtain help to kill themselves with
lethal drugs.

Over the next month hundreds of thousands of pounds will be
spent by the campaign group Dignity in Dying (the former Voluntary Euthanasia
Society), who drafted the bill, aided and abetted by its principle cheerleader,
the BBC, who can be guaranteed to give it the full oxygen of publicity and to
grant an international platform to anyone who supports it.

Expect to see more celebrities coming out to back what they
perceive to be a popular cause, more opinion polls telling us that most people
want to see a change in the law and more cynically timed cases of people having
to journey to Switzerland to end their lives at the Dignitas facility because
there is no similar opportunity here.

Expect also to see other campaign groups with more radical
agendas entering the fray in an attempt to see the bill’s provisions extended
to a far wider group of people.

The presence of determined and well-funded groups like the Society
for Old Age Rational Suicide (SOARS), The British Humanist Association, the National
Secular Society and Exit International assures us that any change in the law to
allow assisted suicide for anyone at all will be followed by a continuing
clamour to broaden its provisions even more. It Marris’s law passes it will be
only the beginning.

One of the major arguments put by all of these campaigners
is that our current law is broken and needs fixing. In fact Dignity in Dying plans
to plaster up ‘Fix our broken assisted dying law’ posters all over London throughout
the summer.

Leading politicians across all major parties have already
signalled their opposition to a change in the law. They include SNP leaders
Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond, Labour leadership candidates Andy Burnham and
Jeremy Corban, past and present Liberal Democrat leaders Nick Clegg and Tim
Farron and most of the Tory government’s cabinet, including Prime Minister
David Cameron himself.

But even Cameron, who has been consistent and resolute in
his opposition, seems to weakening under the pressure to concede that the
current law is not fully fit for purpose. In an answer to a recent
parliamentary question he suggested that although he did not support
Marris’s and Falconer’s proposals, he conceded that there were ‘imperfections
and problems with the current law’.

But is our law broken? What is the actual evidence for this
claim? I am struggling to find any at all.

Dignity in Dying are working hard to convince us that there is a huge demand for assisted suicide and that
thousands of well-meaning and compassionate relatives risk prosecution under
the current law for ‘helping’ their loved ones because the law is not clear
enough about whether they will be prosecuted or not.

But in fact none of this is actually true.

Under the current law, the Suicide Act 1961, it is not
against the law to commit, or to attempt to commit, suicide.

On the other hand, ‘encouraging or assisting a suicide’ is a
crime carrying a discretionary sentence
of up to 14 years imprisonment.

The law carries this blanket prohibition of helping people
kill themselves in order to protect vulnerable people from exploitation and
abuse. Any change will remove legal protection from those who are elderly, disabled,
or suffering from physical or mental illness.

It will thereby encourage those who stand to gain
financially or emotionally from their deaths, either to coerce them or subtly
suggest that they take this course, or at very least not to stand in their way.
Yes the law provides a very strong deterrent.

The reason the law makes no exceptions is because laws are
best defended when they hold to strong consistent principles and don’t try to
make exceptions for individuals with arguably extenuating circumstances.
Imagine a speeding law that was accompanied by a list of excusable reasons for
going above 30 mph in a built up area ahead of the event. It would be utterly
unworkable.

Managing exceptions is far better left to the police, the
crown prosecution service and the courts.

This is not a legal fudge but one of the foundations of the
British Justice system.

The handling of an individual hard case is dealt with,
not by a piece of paper, but after careful consideration by professionals who
know the law, but are able to apply it in any given case with discretion and
kindness, to temper justice with mercy.

When a case of alleged assisted suicide is brought to
attention it is first investigated by the police who submit their finding after
a careful examination of the facts to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) which
must then make a decision about whether to prosecute.

In weighing this decision the Director of Public Prosecutions
(DPP) must decide whether there is enough evidence to bring a case (there often
is not) and whether it is in the public interest to do so.

Only if the answer to both these questions is yes does it
proceed to court. And in the extremely rare event of a conviction resulting,
the judge is also given discretion to make the punishment fit the crime.

Fourteen years is an absolute maximum sentence which is virtually never given.
Those who are convicted and sentenced generally go to prison for far less or do
not receive a custodial sentence at all.

So how is this law actually working? According to the CPS’s
latest figures 1 April 2009 up to 24 April 2015, there have been only 110 cases referred to the CPS by
the police that have been recorded as assisted suicide. This is less than 20
per year or under two every month.

Of these 110 cases, 70 were not proceeded with by the CPS and 25 cases were withdrawn by the
police. In fact in all the high profile cases we see on our television screens
the overwhelming majority result in no charges being brought, let alone any
convictions.

Of the remaining 15 cases eight are ongoing and six were referred onwards for
prosecution for homicide or other serious crime. Yes, some assisted suicide
cases turn out to be cleverly disguised murders where the key witness to what
really happened is dead. This is another reason why it is so crucial that all
cases of alleged assisted suicide are properly investigated. It is the threat
of an investigation that keeps us safe.

Since 2009 only one case has been successfully prosecuted, that of Kevin
Howe in October 2013.

Howe was jailed for twelve
years after supplying his suicidal friend Stephen Walker with petrol and a
lighter in order to set fire to himself. Walker suffered 90% burns but
miraculously survived and now faces a life of treatment and disability as a
result.

The only other person, not yet on the CPS website, who has been convicted and sentenced, whom I
am aware of subsequently, is Lyndsay
Jones who provided another suicidal man Philip Makinson with a heroin and a
syringe in order that he could kill himself with a lethal injection. She was jailed
in July this year for four and a half years.

These are the sort of cases that end up in prison under the
present law.

We are also told by campaigners of the vast numbers of
people who are making one way trips to Switzerland to end their lives at the
Dignitas facility. But the reality is 273
cases in the 16 years from 1998 to 2014 – fewer than 20 a year. Although
each individual case is a tragedy, the numbers are tiny when we put them
alongside the 500,000 people who die in Britain each year from all causes and
the 1,300 and 15,000 annual assisted suicide deaths we would have annually
under the laws currently in place in Oregon and the Netherlands respectively.

Their significance has been magnified in a hugely
disproportionate way by the media. If fact several have gone to Zurich accompanied
by television news teams or have planned their deaths at strategic moments in
the campaign in an almost cynical attempt to influence public opinion and place
pressure on decision-makers. Most also did not need assistance to end their
lives. And most notably not one relative or helper has so far been prosecuted.

The reality is that Britain’s law on assisted suicide is
clear and right and is working well.

The strong penalties it holds in reserve act as a strong
deterrent to exploitation and abuse as evidenced by the tiny number of people
breaking it.

It is also being exercised compassionately as the discretion
it gives to judges and prosecutors means that only two people have so far been
convicted and sentenced under it in the last five years. And neither of these
received the maximum sentence of 14 years.

Having a clear strong and simple law like this offers protection
for disabled, sick and elderly people from those who have an interest,
financial or otherwise in their deaths. Of course it does mean that those who
wish to push its boundaries and break it – for whatever reason – run the risk
of a police investigation, a prosecution and a possible custodial sentence.

But this is a very small price to pay given the protection
that it offers.

The law on assisted suicide is not broken. It is clear, just,
merciful and fair. It does not need fixing.

Wednesday, 5 August 2015

In an astounding move last week, the Manhattan Supreme Court
ruled
that chimps are notpersons
under the law.

Judge Jaffes was not persuaded by the case presented by The
Nonhuman Rights Project but did suggest that animal ‘personhood’ is possible in
the not too distant future.

‘Efforts to extend legal rights to chimpanzees are thus
understandable; some day they may even succeed,’ she wrote in a 33-page
decision. ‘For now, however, given the precedent to which I am bound, it is
hereby ordered, that the petition for a writ of habeas corpus is denied and the
proceeding is dismissed.’

The ruling will come as a huge blow to animal lovers –
especially in the wake of the recent killing of the popular Zimbabwean lion
Cecil by an American dentist.

This is because the Manhattan ruling casts Cecil’s own personhood
status into doubt.

However, those mourning the passing of Cecil and regretting this
judgement will be comforted to learn that his brother Jericho, apparently also
a lion, has
now been confirmed to be alive, contrary to an earlier report of his
demise.

The Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, which had reported Jericho’s
death on its Facebook page on Saturday, said on Sunday that the lion was ‘alive
and well’ and has adopted the cubs of Cecil, whose
recent killing sparked global outrage over big-game trophy hunting.

In a fascinating twist, Jericho may in fact be relieved by the Manhattan court ruling,
which although not legally binding in Africa, does add legal weight to his
non-person status. Given Zimbabwe’s human
rights record he is probably better off being a non-person and is not therefore
expected to appeal the judgment.

Perhaps in celebration of this, the 11-year old lion on
Sunday was
observed ‘feeding on a giraffe kill with the lionesses from his pride’.

Another corollary of the Manhattan ruling, of course, is
that giraffes are also non-persons, although judging by the lack of outrage
about the (nameless) giraffe’s death at the paws and jaws of Jericho, some non-human
non-persons (lions) are clearly of higher status than others (giraffes).

Whether this higher non-person status applies to all
carnivores, or merely to those with higher intelligence, will need to be determined
in subsequent judgements. The relative status of lions and chimpanzees, for
instance, has not thus far been tested in court.

Although it may simply be that, as the said giraffe was
killed by a member of another non-human species rather than by a legal person, the muted
media response may be because a non-human non-person rather than a human person
was responsible for his (or her) death.

Pharaoh requested help to kill herself in a Basel ‘clinic’
because she found the reality of old age ‘awful’, did not ‘think old age is
fun’, did not want to end up as a ‘hobbling old lady’ and because she did not
want to be a ‘burden’ to her children. ‘The thought that I may need help from
my children appalls me’, she wrote.

She added that expecting help from one’s children is ‘a most
selfish and unreasonable view’.

And yet the former nurse had no major health problems and
was on no medication. She had intermittent back pain following a bout of
shingles and had tinnitus - about par for the course for a person of her age.

This evening I found myself live on ITV London in one of the
most surreal TV debates of my life.

The debate was barely three minutes long and sandwiched
between an account of a bus having its top taken off and an interview with a
couple who had been married for 25 years after meeting on (recently deceased)
Cilla Black’s ‘Blind date’.

The show passed seamlessly from story to story with each
being treated with an equal seriousness that only TV presenters could manage whilst
keeping a straight face.

I started by saying that most people had been shocked and
appalled by the Pharaoh case and that it had led to outrage on social media.
The key question was why a woman encountering the usual maladies of growing old
might resort to such desperate measures.

Sitting opposite me on the programme was Michael Irwin,
retired GP and Director of the Society for Old Age Rational Suicide (SOARS).

Irwin is a seasoned euthanasia campaigner and was in fact struck off by the General
Medical Council (GMC) in 2005 for attempting to help an Isle of Man politician
take his own life.

He was subsequently thrown out of the Voluntary Euthanasia
Society (now renamed Dignity in Dying) for his propensity to break the law as a
means to having it changed.

Irwin has helped over 20 people with advice about how to
kill themselves in Switzerland and has actually accompanied four to their
deaths but has somehow managed to evade prosecution for ‘encouraging or
assisting suicide’, a crime punishable by up to 14 years in prison under the
Suicide Act 1961.

I asked Irwin before the debate why he felt his life – at 84
he is nine years older than Pharaoh and hobbles with a walking stick – was
worth living whilst Pharaoh’s was not. He said it was all about ‘choice’. She had had enough but he had not.

What was it that gave his life meaning and purpose and made
him think that life was worth living? Apparently being able to have debates on
media on the issue with people like me! His commitment to the cause gave him a reason
to live.

And here we come to the nub of the debate. This is not
really about pain, or terminal illness or disability or even old age because
these are not the real things motivating those who make one way trips over the
English Channel.

It’s really about meaning, purpose and hope. This is borne
out by the published facts from jurisdictions where assisted suicide is legal.

In the US
state of Oregon those making use of the Death with Dignity Act give ‘loss of
autonomy’ (93%), ‘loss of enjoyment of life’ (89%) and ‘loss of dignity’ (73%)
as the top three reasons for ending their lives. In Washington
61% cite ‘fear of being a burden on others’.

These are not medical reasons – they are existential or,
perhaps more accurately, spiritual reasons.

And feeling this way is not strongly correlated with health
status either. There are many sick, elderly and disabled people (the overwhelming
majority) who desperately want to live – to grow old with their loved ones, to
enjoy the last vestige of what life has to offer.

Similarly there are able-bodied people who desperately want
their lives to end – either because they have lost hope or, as in Pharaoh’s
case, because of what they fear might happen to then in the future.

Which should surely, I would have thought, prompt the
response of us doing all we can, both to restore hope and allay fear, by caring
for the physical, social and spiritual needs of the whole person. Not to pass
over a barbiturate-spiked drink or provide accompaniment for a grisly last
journey.

Pharaoh’s (and Irwin’s) main argument is autonomy – choice. But
choice is a two edged sword.

If choice really trumps all then why deny assisted suicide
to anyone who wants it – including the ‘troubled teen’ and the ‘bereaved
elderly’ as Philip Nitschke has put it?
Why not set up euthanasia booths on every street corner and offer
partakers ‘a martini and a medal’ before offering them the lethal draught, as
novelist Martin
Amis has seriously suggested?

That is surely what consistency about choice should lead us
to accept.

But the truth is that choice, although resonating with the
zeitgeist of our postmodern secular humanist society, is a lame and vacuous argument.

Each one of us actually believes that there are limits to choice.
That is precisely why in a free democratic society we have laws. I’d even
suggest it is in fact those laws which actually make us free. I am not free to
speed on the freeway or to throw a brick through my neighbour’s window, or to
run off with his wife – out of respect for my neighbour’s freedom and dignity.

Choice has limits and that is actually what this debate
should be about – where those limits lie and why.

Every law on the statute books stops some person doing what
they desperately want to do. But laws are necessary simply because the exercise
of one person’s freedom may endanger or undermine the reasonable freedoms of another.
The fact that I desperately want something is not sufficient reason to change
the law so that I may have my wish granted.

And it has been consistently the judgement of parliaments,
doctors' groups and disability rights' activists in this country that any law allowing
assisted suicide would place a burden on vulnerable sick, elderly and disabled
people to end their lives for fear of being a burden on others. It would
undermine their freedom precisely because their choice would not thereby be
free – it would rather be a coercive offer.

Being a burden is part and parcel of being human. All of us
at some time of our lives – not least at both ends - will be a burden. But 'mutual burdensomeness' is what true family and community is all about.

Because a
truly free and humane society is one in which the strong willingly make
sacrifices for the weak, rather than sacrifice the weak to preserve their own
freedoms.

By promoting the idea, as Pharaoh has (with the assistance
of the British media), that it is ‘selfish and unreasonable’ to expect one’s
loved ones (and the wider community) to offer care and support in times of
need, is very dangerous indeed.

It will have the effect of intensifying the guilt that
drives vulnerable people to contemplate suicide as a solution to ordinary human
problems.

We should have no truck with this. There is a far better way
of ministering to those paralysed in their choices by fear, dependence and lack
of hope.

Bearing one another’s burdens is, after all, the essence of
the ‘law of Christ’ (Galatians 6:2).

The term has been tossed back and forth like a political
football for so many decades that it's lost much of its meaning. Pro-life
supporters are painted as ‘radical’ by the media and ‘anti-women’ by pundits.

But the recent
exposure of Planned Parenthood for the large-scale flogging of human
body parts for profit (see also here, here, here and here)
– along with a long
catalogue of past misdemeanours - is causing more and more people to
realise that they are, in fact, pro-life.

The argument goes like this. If the baby in the womb is not
a human being with rights then what seriously is the problem with treating it
as a commodity to be cannibalised for parts which can be bought and sold?

On the other hand, if you are concerned then why are you not
equally concerned about the destruction of any human life
before birth at any stage?

Let’s be consistent. Planned Parenthood are being ruthlessly
consistent.

It’s time to unite around the foundational truths that
define what it means to be ‘pro-life’.

That's why leaders of the pro-life movement have written The
Pro-Life Declaration and over one hundred thousand people have signed
it.

In four simple statements, the Declaration articulates the
basics of the pro-life position void of any exemptions or excuses.

1. I believe every life has dignity and limitless
potential.

Despite age, physical ability, or vulnerability, everyone
should be given the opportunity to live and make their mark in the world.

2. I believe the “right to life” is the most
fundamental right protected by America’s founding documents.

America’s forefathers recognized the importance of the
“right to life,” citing it as the first of all rights given in the Declaration
of Independence.

3. I believe life should be protected and defended
from the moment of conception until natural death.

Abortion must be prevented at every stage of development.
Every human has the right to a full life.

4. I believe grace, compassion and understanding
are essential to protecting life.

We must be committed to working across racial, ethnic,
religious and economic divides to restore the sanctity of human life in
communities across the world.

Sunday, 2 August 2015

The Christians in Pakistan website published an interesting article last week on Old Testament Archaeology which I have summarised here.

Old Testament critics previously argued that Moses invented the stories found in Genesis. In doing so, they basically claimed that there was no verification that the people and cities mentioned in the oldest of biblical accounts ever really existed.

However the discovery of the Ebla archive in northern Syria in the 1970′s put paid to all that.

In a large library inside a royal archive room the excavating team discovered almost 15,000 ancient tablets and fragments dating from 2400 -2300 BC.

When joined together these accounted for about 2,500 tablets which confirmed that personal and location titles in the Biblical Patriarchal accounts are authentic.

For a long period of time, the critics of the Old Testament used to argue that the name ‘Canaan’ was used wrongly in the early chapters of the Bible. But the word ‘Canaan’ appears on the Ebla tablets proving that the term was actually used in ancient Syria during the time in which the Old Testament was written.

Additionally, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, destroyed at the time of Abraham, were also thought to be pure fiction by Bible critics. But these cities are also identified in the Ebla tablets. Also mentioned is the city of Haran, described in Genesis as the city of Abram’s father, Terah. Previous to this discovery, ‘scholars’ doubted the actual existence of the ancient city.

In addition to this, countless other archaeological findings confirm the biblical records to be real and accurate. Some of these findings are listed below:

• The campaign into Israel by Pharaoh Shishak (1 Kings 14:25-26) is recorded on the walls of the Temple of Amun in Thebes, Egypt.
• The revolt of Moab against Israel (2 Kings 1:1; 3:4-27) is recorded on the Mesha Inscription.
• The fall of Samaria (2 Kings 17:3-6, 24; 18:9-11) to Sargon II, king of Assyria, is recorded on his palace walls.
• The defeat of Ashdod by Sargon II (Isaiah 20:1) is recorded on his palace walls.
• The campaign of the Assyrian king Sennacherib against Judah (2 Kings 18:13-16) is recorded on the Taylor Prism.
• The siege of Lachish by Sennacherib (2 Kings 18:14, 17) is recorded on the Lachish reliefs.
• The assassination of Sennacherib by his own sons (2 Kings 19:37) is recorded in the annals of his son Esarhaddon.
• The fall of Nineveh as predicted by the prophets Nahum and Zephaniah (2 Kings 2:13-15) is recorded on the Tablet of Nabopolasar.
• The fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon (2 Kings 24:10-14) is recorded in the Babylonian Chronicles.
• The captivity of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, in Babylon (2 Kings 24:15-16) is recorded on the Babylonian Ration Records.
• The fall of Babylon to the Medes and Persians (Daniel 5:30-31) is recorded on the Cyrus Cylinder.
• The freeing of captives in Babylon by Cyrus the Great (Ezra 1:1-4; 6:3-4) is recorded on the Cyrus Cylinder.

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Kiwi, Christian and Medical

This blog deals mainly with matters at the interface of Christianity and Medicine. But I do also diverge into other subjects - especially New Zealand, rugby, economics, developing world, politics and topics of general Christian and/or medical interest. The opinions expressed here are mine and may not necessarily reflect the views of my employer or anyone else associated with me.

About Me

I am CEO of Christian Medical Fellowship, a UK-based organisation with 4,500 UK doctors and 1,000 medical students as members. The opinions expressed here however are mine, and may not necessarily reflect the views of CMF or anyone else associated with me.